Emma Foster-Smith is a long-haul driver for a major UK retailer, a wife, and a mother of two young children. She’s also a painter, bookbinder, and someone whose home feels as warm and lived-in as her stories. A piano stands in the corner, sheet music scattered across it. Her own prints hang proudly on the walls, and stacks of hand-bound books wait for their next owner. 

Over coffee, Emma speaks candidly about how motherhood changed her relationship with the road. “Before I became a mother I wasn’t worried about anything really. I drove without concerns”. During pregnancy, Emma drove until the five-month mark before switching to office work. She returned with flexible hours a gesture she appreciated but something had shifted. “I started to feel fear. Not just for me, but because I had these little people who depended on me. For the first time, I questioned my mortality. I was scared of not making it home.” 

Her driving changed. Everything on the road seemed “too big, too fast.” She became hyper-aware of how little thought many drivers gave to stopping distances, how casually they took risks. And in that heightened state of awareness, trauma struck. 

Emma’s PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) diagnosis followed after she witnessed a fatality, then two further incidents within three weeks. “One was when someone had jumped from a bridge,” she tells me quietly. “I saw the police shining a torch onto the ground...and I could see the mess. I couldn’t look away. That one stayed with me.” The second happened at 5:30 one morning. She remembers the police officer holding up a sheet, a Mini parked in the lay-by. “I couldn’t work out who it was. Had someone jumped? Was it the truck driver?” For Emma, the impact of these incidents cut deeper than she could have imagined. “The hardest part was how it affected my parenting,” she says. “I knew I had to focus on emotional regulation, not just for me, but for my kids. I want them to grow up knowing how to ask for help, to express how they feel.” 

Her employer stepped in, offering therapy and a gradual return through exposure, driving the same routes, listening to the same songs that had played during those traumatic moments. Her experiences helped spark a broader mental health initiative in her company, a recognition that trauma behind the wheel is far more common than many realise. “I don’t have a problem now,” she says. “PTSD doesn’t rule me anymore. But it can still creep up, especially with how people drive these days. Fast, reckless, no understanding of the space we need to stop. If you try to be safe, people get impatient. That really gets to me.” 

Spending time with Emma reminded me that our roads are navigated by human beings, not machines. Behind every truck is someone’s parent, someone’s partner and sometimes, someone quietly carrying the weight of things they can’t unsee.